


Spotted

by Skyler10



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Pete's World Torchwood, Telepathic Bond, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-17 03:35:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5852473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyler10/pseuds/Skyler10
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose and Tentoo encounter another telepath at the scene of an alien crash landing, but it isn’t who you’d think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spotted

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the TimePetels prompt: “my toddler keeps staring at you, I’m really sorry”

The small, scaly alien had just enough time to make himself imperceptible to the human eye before he snuck out the escape hatch of his rubbish, secondhand ship. He was almost immediately trampled by shoes. Dozens, hundreds, all going in opposite directions quite quickly. They were making loud noises, too. The people, not the shoes. Though the shoes weren’t all that soft on the antennae either. He ducked behind a café’s outer wall. He sensed another telepath approaching and turned off all mental connective abilities. He was now truly invisible, to both eyes and minds of the Earthlings shouting all around him.

* * *

 

It was four hours after an unmanned UFO crashed in the middle of Trafalgar Square. People were still scattered everywhere, buzzing about looking for family members. Tourists, school children on field trips, the general public… a diversity unique to London roamed through the area surrounding Torchwood’s contained site. The interested bystanders were a nuisance, but it was the few remaining panicked parents that were impeding operations.  

“It’s alright, ma’am. Yes, sir. Detour is this way, ladies. No, sorry, that’s off-limits to civilians. Oi, you two! Stop right there!”

Agent Rose Tyler was in command mode. But she was almost done. Soon her team would be relieved and debriefed while the clean-up crew restored the square to its proper state.

“They’re here!” Jake shouted through the comm. “Reconvene at headquarters in one hour. Over and out.”

“See ya there, mate,” Rose answered.

The full weight of her exhaustion hit as she turned away from the site. The last thing she wanted to do was go back to the office and wait for an hour for their debriefing meeting.

Her telepathy tingled and her spirits lifted immediately. He was nearby.

Heaven greeted her in the form of a sexy self-confident grin, really great hair, ancient dark eyes, and manly hairy hands holding a bag of fresh chips. He really was the perfect man. She told him so, at the great risk of inflating his ego even further. He only laughed and kissed her forehead.

Well that wasn’t good enough. Not nearly good enough.

She captured his lips with her own for a grateful kiss which he eagerly returned.

“How was your day off?” she asked when they separated.

“Quite relaxing. Though I heard there was a crisis, so I thought I’d come check it out.”

Rose snorted. “Yeah, four hours later.”

“I missed it by four hours?!”

“Mmhm. Been here a while.”

“Bollocks.”

“You thought you’d come get in on the action, didn’t you?” she asked, eyes sparkling. “Can’t even stay away from the aliens on your day off.”

He ignored her comment and led her over to sit on the side of the fountain, then handed over the fried potatoes.

They enjoyed the snack while she updated him on the events of the day. They still didn’t know who the ship belonged to, but the more mechanically inclined agents had worked out what went wrong to make it crash.

She licked her fingers and looked up to notice a little girl wandering around, chasing pigeons, then picking up rocks and throwing them at the birds. The child’s mother watched carefully nearby.

“So, I was thinking we should…” the Doctor trailed off, sensing she was distracted. “Ro?”

“Yeah?” she snapped back to their conversation.

“I was thinking we should run some diagnostics on the TARDIS this weekend. Wanna help?”

“Yeah, of course!” Rose brightened at talk of their baby time machine.

He rambled on about what all he was hoping to measure. She understood about half of it, which was admittedly more than ever before. But soon she found her attention wandering, her telepathy picking up on someone else in the area with gifts of the mind besides her fiancé and herself. It was a weak, fleeting sense, but her underdeveloped barriers meant she could feel it, where he most likely couldn’t.

The flutter of pigeon wings had long since stopped. The little girl was unnaturally still, unblinking attention devoted to Rose and the Doctor. She couldn’t be more than two, three at the most, but she was staring with the focus of a much older child.

“Sorry,” the girl’s mother began, rushing over. “She does this sometimes. C’mon, sweetheart. Let’s leave this nice couple alone.”

“Bid bad woof?” the girl asked, taking slow steps forward.

Rose grinned down at the precious thing. “What was that, love?”

“Bid bad woof!” The girl exclaimed in glee.

“Um, sorry.” The mum looked, ironically, sheepish. “I think she is saying big bad wolf. She’s been obsessed with fairytales. You do look a bit like the Red Riding Hood in her storybook.”

“No,” the child stated firmly. “Bad Woof.”

The Doctor and Rose exchanged wary glances. At her telepathic prodding, he lowered his barriers a bit.

“Ma’am, this might sound like a strange question,” the Doctor asked. “But has your daughter ever known things were going to happen before they did? Or known what you were thinking before you said it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the woman denied, but her eyes betrayed her.

“Ohhh, but perhaps you do. Perhaps it scares you a bit. But that’s alright! It’s perfectly normal. Well. I say normal. Very rare. Especially for a human. But for those humans that do have it, perfectly normal.”

The mum seemed as if she might run away on the spot so Rose reached out a reassuring hand.

“It’s ok. We have it too. He was born with it. I sort of inherited it. In a kind of… accident. A long time ago.”

“And we have friends who specialize in this sort of thing,” the Doctor concluded and fished around in his pocket. “Here. Take this card. When she’s ready for school, call our friends up. Tell them we sent you.”

“But… you’re Torchwood.” Her eyes flicked from the card back up to the Doctor’s face. “You talk to aliens… and…”

“Yeah,” Rose laughed. “We’re in the ‘weird’ business. Nothing much freaks us out, trust me.”

At her “ _trust me_ ,” the puzzle pieces finally clicked into place for the poor woman now hugging her toddler close to her chest.

“Oh. Oh my god. You…” She swallowed, then turned her attention to the Doctor. “And you’re… I saw you both in the papers. You were at this, um, Vitex thing. I mean, of course you were, your dad is… Wow. I feel like an idiot. All this time I didn’t realize you’re…”

“I’m just a friend.” Rose shook her head. “Just someone who knows what it’s like. Trying to help. Only, maybe keep this – this whole conversation – between us, alright?”

“Yeah.” The mother nodded. “Thanks. Thank you.”   

“Bye Woof!” the telepathic toddler called out as they walked away.

Rose smiled and waved.

The Doctor nudged her other hand with his.

“Time to go for us too, love.”

“Oh! You’re right. I didn’t realize how late it was. Ok, I take back what I was thinking about your timey-senses earlier.”

“Oi, you didn’t project that, but now I’m a bit offended.”

“You can’t be offended. I just took it back.”

“Ah. Well, in that case, will you accompany me back to the office, m’dear lady?” He offered his arm, and she took it.

“Certainly, Sir Doctor,” she matched his posh accent to play along. “But you don’t have to go. Just me.”

“And miss the opportunity to solve the mystery of the origins of a UFO? A UFO with no aliens inside? Do you know me at all, Rose Tyler?”

“Point taken. Lead on, then!”

* * *

And with the bonded couple gone and the gifted child away with its mother, the tiny invisible pilot of the crashed ship breathed a sigh of relief. Now all he had to do was sneak into Earth’s “Torchwood” to retrieve his ship from the humans. With any luck, they would repair it for him before he got there and he could steal it back without them noticing he was there. No telling what would happen if he was discovered. Humans, he had heard, could be unpredictable. You never knew what was going on inside their heads.


End file.
